Friday, January 1, 2016

Overfishing, climate change, habitat destruction and pollution remain major threats to the world’s ocean.
But amidst all that there is some seriously good ocean conservation
news worth celebrating.
So, to continue the tradition started last year
with listing 14 Ocean Conservation Wins of 2014, here’s a rundown for 2015 that will hopefully fill you with #OceanOptimism.
These wins represent the diligent efforts of organizations and
individuals too numerous to list, so let’s just start with a blanket
shoutout to all of #TeamOcean for a great year.

2. New technology is being developed to combat illegal fishing.
Designating all these new reserves means little without enforcement,
and we can’t enforce unless we know what’s happening out on the water.
One big tech effort launched this year is Global Fishing Watch, a partnership between Skytruth,
Google and Oceana to track fishing vessels and identify illegal
fishing.
Another similar program is the Pew Charitable Trust’s Virtual Watch Room.
These technologies are in prototype phase and need significant
improvement before they live up to expectations, but it’s a promising
and exciting development.

4. Ocean conservation is one of the UN’s new sustainable development goals.
These goals set the UN’s agenda for the next 15 years, and it wasn’t
clear the ocean would make the cut, but (voila!) Goal 14 is to “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.”
Specific targets include, by 2020, conserving 10 percent of the ocean
(but see #1 above for how far we have to go and whether 10 percent is
even enough), halting overfishing and illegal fishing, and ending the
subsidies that encourage them.
Addressing marine pollution and ocean
acidification, and supporting small island states and small-scale
artisanal fisheries are also priorities.

5. The Port State Measures Agreement is close to being ratified.
Another one from the UN, this is an agreement aiming to “to prevent,
deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
through the implementation of robust port State measures.”
In other
words, boats have to come into port eventually, so it’s important to
have international cooperation in place to prosecute the bad guys when
they come ashore.IUU fishing
is a major issue, representing ~$20 billion annually, and this measure
will greatly increase enforcement capacity.
The agreement will enter
into force after 25 countries ratify it—nine more ratifications to go,
all expected in 2016.

6. The ocean is getting some good ink and screen time.Racing Extinction premiered in theaters, bringing the issues of trade in endangered species, overfishing and ocean acidification to the big screen.
The Discovery Channel promised
to stop with all the fear-mongering and straight up fake documentaries
during Shark Week.
Richard Branson’s philanthropy launched Ocean Unite, to pull together and support the ocean conservation community on communications. And see #6 below.

8. Small island states are leading the way and getting support on ocean management.
Not only did small island states come together as a powerful voice at COP 21 in Paris, this year also saw the launch of Blue Guardians at the Clinton Global Initiative.
This new partnership that includes a broad collaboration of organizations (SIDS DOCK, Digital Globe, The Nature Conservancy, World Bank, Clinton Climate Initiative,
Waitt Institute and others), and is focused on simultaneously
protecting oceans and supporting coastal economies in the context of a
changing climate.

9. A nonpartisan coalition is bringing ocean issues into the 2016 U.S. elections.
The Sea Party Coalitionwas launched
by Blue Frontier, with tea party and liberal Congressmen, environmental
NGOs, an evangelical minister, climate activists, ocean scientists and
philanthropists participating.
The hope is to use the crosscutting
sentiments for ocean conservation and against offshore drilling to get
some traction for ocean issues in the 2016 elections.

10. Anonymous is hacking for ocean conservation.
The hacking collective claims credit for shutting down government websites of Japan and Iceland in retribution for their whaling.
Both countries continue to kill whales via a loophole in the International Whaling Commission agreement that allows whaling for “scientific research.”

12. Ocean zoning continues to gain traction as a key policy approach.
The Waitt Institute’s zoning-focused Blue Halo Initiative has
been scaled up from the pilot project in Barbuda to launch two
new partnerships, with the governments of Montserrat and Curaçao.
Perhaps more importantly, at least a dozen other island nations are
interested in developing similar comprehensive, science-based,
community-driven sustainable ocean management plans for their waters.

13. Plastic microbeads are getting banned.New research
shows that there are at least 15 trillion pieces of plastic in the
ocean, at least three times more than previously thought.
Plastic
microbeads, the sneakiest tiny bits of plastic, are in all sorts of
toiletries (like face scrubs and toothpaste).
They end up in the ocean
in droves, then in creatures’ bellies and gills, and cause all sorts of problems.
The good news is the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have passed bills that will ban the use of microbeads.
Fear not!—there are plenty of non-plastic, non-toxic ways to exfoliate.

14. An end to subsidies for unsustainable fishing is gaining steam.
Much of the world’s overfishing and illegal fishing is financed by government subsidies.
But now, in a WTO Ministerial Statement,
27 countries have committed to ending subsidies “that negatively affect
overfished fish stocks” or that support IUU fishing. This is also a
target of the UN’s new ocean goal (see #2 above).

15. The COP 21 climate agreement mentioned the ocean.Given
that the ocean is the majority of the planet and a lynchpin of the
climate system and carbon cycle, it’s a bit nutty that just getting the
ocean mentioned was something we needed to fight for.
However, the ocean
was not originally included in the agreement’s text, and it is due to strong collective presence of the ocean community at COP 21 that the ocean got mentions in the final document.
Yet, note this analysis
of how the agreement is not nearly as lovely, equitable, and
transformative as most reporting would have you believe, and that it’s
certainly insufficient for saving coral reefs.

If this trend of ocean wins from last year
and this year continues, we may well avoid the most dire predictions of
ocean ecosystem collapse.
To maintain this positive inertia, we must
keep coming together and collaborating, and draw others into the fold to
ensure (as we say at the Waitt Institute)
sustainable, profitable and enjoyable use of the ocean for this and
future generations.
Hopefully 2016 will be the year of really coming to
grips with how to use the ocean without using it up.
Happy new year!